“I got away as fast as I could. She really freaked me out. She’d been stalking me!”
“Not necessarily,” said Hunter coolly. We were walking around Rothay Park in his lunch hour. The place was quiet: only a few pushchairs and sedate old couples shared the lawns with us. Hunter looked the perfect, serious policeman, pacing along beneath the stately trees with his hands behind his back. Only he wasn’t taking me seriously.
“Think about it!” I urged. “That first evening when I took Selena back to the guesthouse, she said she’d seen me before, painting at Skelwith Fold. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But what if she’d been stalking me ever since then? My God!” I put my hands to my hot cheeks. “To think I invited her to my house! And she slept there, in the same room – anything could have happened!”
“But didn’t,” said Hunter equably. “And it isn’t your house.”
“It’s not funny!”
“Of course not. Do you want to make an official complaint about her behaviour?”
“Don’t be daft. I don’t have any proof, do I? It’s only her word.”
“A very vague word.”
“Not that vague. She said she saw me walking down Lake Road with my box under my arm!”
“So she noticed you. That doesn’t mean she followed you.”
Selena’s red painted lips mouthed at me. I wanted you to rescue me, to make me real. Yet when I dragged her out of the lake, what was it she had said? It’s where I live. Where I belong. So what was that all about?
It was fantasy, that was what. Attention-seeking. Teasing. “She says some weird things.”
“Really?” said Hunter.
“There’s something wrong with her.”
“Congratulations. You got there in the end.” We had arrived at the children’s playground. where he jogged up onto the swinging walkway. Bridge of death, we used to call it as kids, though you’d have hard work to twist an ankle on it.
“That’s not very policeman-like,” I said severely.
“Good.” He jangled along the walkway and jumped down at the other end. “That little story wouldn’t be the first thing she’s invented,” he said. “I checked out the birth certificate. Falsified, like you thought. Selena Crabbe has a matching death certificate from 1997. Car crash. And she was born in the seventies, not the eighties. It was a fairly clumsy forgery.”
“So our Selena isn’t Selena at all. Who is she, then?”
“Who knows?”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” I demanded.
“That’s up to Larry Irlam. He’d probably rather not charge her with anything if he can help it. He thinks she’s vulnerable. In need of protection, not prosecution. He’s under her spell.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “How does she do it?”
“She’s a beautiful widow,” said Hunter, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did. She’d had me under a spell of sorts for a while, after all. Though beauty shouldn’t influence a policeman, surely, even one as reluctant to engage with nastiness as Larry.
“And what if she’s a beautiful murderer?” I said.
Hunter sighed. “Look, Eden, Isaac hit his head on a wooden beam inside the shed, and fell. That’s what the forensic evidence indicates. The pathologist thinks it was accidental, and Larry’s happy to agree. There has to be an inquest because of the unexpected nature of his death, but the coroner won’t find anyone to blame except the bull.”
“But Larry thought I’d hit him. Why has he changed his mind?”
“Isaac was taller than the beam, and for once he forgot to duck to avoid it. Some of his hairs were found trapped in the splintered wood. He wouldn’t even have had to knock himself out. Once he was on the floor, in all that slippery muck, and the bull stood on him…”
“Don’t,” I said.
He shut up. After a moment he said quietly, “So why do you think Selena was involved?”
“Because Bryony says pushing Isaac in a temper is the sort of thing she’d do. I’ve seen her push Griff around when she got annoyed with him for trying to take her photo. She didn’t just push him, she kicked him. And what about that painting of mine? I know Selena says she was out shopping, but she’s got no proof.”
“So tell me what you think happened,” said Hunter.
“Selena knew I was supposed to be there at twelve noon. She heard me agree that with Isaac at the dinner party. Well, everybody did.” I blushed to remember how I’d shouted it down the stairs. “On Monday morning she got annoyed with Isaac over something.”
“Over what?”
“I don’t know. Him telling her off or something.” I recalled how furiously she’d shrieked at Isaac on the landing. Get off me! And she’d shrunk away from him convulsively…
I shivered. Isaac couldn’t possibly have done anything to justify such loathing. “There needn’t have been a proper reason. She didn’t like Isaac very much. So she hit him over the head.”
“What with?”
“A spade or something, I don’t know.”
“Hmm,” said Hunter. “I can really see this going down well with a jury.”
“And when Isaac fell down and got trampled she left my picture and the mints there to try and frame me, in case the police decided that it wasn’t accidental.”
“Why would Selena want to frame you? She seems to like you.”
“I don’t know. Just convenience, I guess, if she knew I was due to turn up any minute.”
“And she conveniently just happened to have one of your pictures to hand. Where did she get it from?” He was slipping into interrogative mode now.
“She could have bought it, or she could easily have stolen it from my house, the evening I took her in. I showed her my painting room and she was picking up all the cards. She seemed fascinated. Maybe she kept one of them.”
“You’ve no evidence of any of this,” said Hunter, but he was listening more intently than before.
“And the mints,” I said. “She knew I liked that sort. She ate half my packet at the guesthouse. Bryony says she buys loads of sweets.”
“Those mints could have been Isaac’s.”
“Isaac didn’t eat them. He didn’t drop them there.” I felt again the thunderous vibrations of the bull’s hooves, the hot, fierce stink and shadow. Nausea rose in my throat and I had to swallow it down.
“One problem,” Hunter pointed out. “Ruby would have seen Selena driving down the track. She saw Bryony leave the farm at nine-thirty in the Landover, and Selena followed an hour later, driving away in the van. But Ruby didn’t notice her return. She saw nobody else until you arrived.”
“Why would she see anyone? Glued to the window, is she?”
“Or she would have heard the car. She seems to be sufficiently observant,” said Hunter levelly.
“Busy lady. I should have thought somebody on foot could sneak past her easily. Though if they were really worried about being seen, they wouldn’t have to. There’s a path that cuts behind the holiday cottages. Selena could have parked up on the road and walked that way to the farm without Ruby noticing.”
Hunter scrutinised me with cool grey eyes. “In that case, so could anybody else. I’m not sure why you’ve got it in for Selena.”
“Because of the painting!” Exasperated, I spread my hands. “All right, it could have been somebody else. Somebody could have bought it at Bowness, or at Freddie’s shop, or I suppose they might have taken it without Freddie’s knowledge. Russell goes there regularly. And so does Ruby.”
That didn’t go down well. “Unfortunately Ruby has an alibi,” Hunter said repressively. He began to walk again, striding out across the wet grass. “As does Russell. I spoke to them both. They were at home at Raven How all the Monday morning from taking Delilah to school until Ruby saw you ride the scooter up the drive: Russell was painting and Ruby was bottling up massage oils.”
“Massage oils? Did she offer you a demo?”
Hunter didn’t even deign to reply. “
She sells aromatherapy oils,” he said distantly. “Apparently they have to be diluted in a base.”
“So they were in separate rooms all morning, were they? And their only alibis are each other?”
“If they need them.”
“Ruby was on the scene fast,” I said. “And she moved the body.”
“She didn’t know it was a body at that point,” countered Hunter. “She was trying to save him. You were there first.”
I could hear the unspoken words: I had failed to try to save him. Nevertheless, I persisted with my latest ill-formed theory.
“Ruby was keen on Isaac.”
“She was a neighbour, and she was neighbourly. So?”
“Maybe it was Ruby, not me, who made a pass at Isaac, and got turned down!” As soon as the snide remark was out, I wished I’d kept it to myself. Hunter glanced at me scathingly.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Eden. Is that the best you can do?”
I bit my lip. “Who stands to benefit? Did Isaac leave a will?”
“Not a recent one. The only will we know about left everything to Luke and his dependents.”
“Selena, then.”
“For what it’s worth. Which in terms of an estate, evidently isn’t much.”
I pondered. “So what happens to the farm?”
“Nothing, for a while. The National Trust will probably appoint a tenant. I think Selena ought to inherit any bits of land that Isaac actually owned, although he had an older sister in Australia who might contest that if she feels inclined.” He slowed beneath the trees. “But tell me this, Eden. Why would Ruby or Russell try to pin this supposed crime on you?”
“Because I’ve got a criminal record, of course! I’m an obvious suspect for the police to latch on to.”
“A criminal record which Ruby and Russell didn’t know about,” said Hunter dampeningly. “I was there when Larry told them. Ruby in particular was appalled.”
“Oh.”
“You seem very ready to think the worst of Ruby. Why is that?”
I was about to deny it: but I owed Hunter better. So I said reluctantly,
“I know I’m not being fair to her. She’s been very good to me: she’s offered to put me up over Easter in spite of all this. She keeps her promises.”
“But?”
“I suppose I’m jealous,” I said with difficulty. “Because she’s got such a nice life. Because she makes a living doing arty stuff, and she has a talented husband, even if he is a prat, and a big house, even if it is freezing, and a family; and because she’s good. She’s honest. And I’m not.”
“No, you’re not,” said Hunter. I knew, and he knew, and I knew that he knew. So I said it.
“I was jealous of her attachment to Isaac.”
“Which might have been mostly in your head,” said Hunter, “and which in any case can hardly be consolation for her now. The funeral’s next Wednesday at Hawkshead.”
“Already?” I was shocked. A lump swelled in my throat at the thought of Isaac in his coffin, the earth laid over him, layer after layer. “I thought you said there’d be an inquest?”
“It’s been opened and adjourned to allow the funeral. I’ve got dispensation from Larry to go along, provided we don’t get a sudden crime wave. I told him it would be good for community relations. And I want to see who turns up. Will you be there?”
“I don’t want to go,” I said instantly, and thought of grizzled Tag Lad lying in the yard, alone while the bells tolled far away, with no master to caress his ears. Grief for the old dog hit me like an axe between the shoulders.
It was awful. I had no warning, and no place to hide. I had to cover my face with my hands because I couldn’t possibly cry in front of Hunter, and in public. But I couldn’t stop heaving and shaking regardless, until after a few seconds I felt his arm go round me. Both of us as rigid as wooden soldiers. It was knowledge of his embarrassment that made me stop. As I shuddered to a standstill, he let me go.
“What was it about Isaac?” he asked quietly.
I groped for a handkerchief. People were looking at us. “He was rooted,” I said. “He was secure. Unchanging.” I thought that was the answer. But it wasn’t. There was something else.
“He was lonely,” I said, the words coming out of the air unexpectedly, and only as I spoke them did I know them to be true. Isaac was lonely, abandoned by the ones he loved. Just like me.
I pulled myself away, ashamed of having betrayed so much. Now Hunter would think I was a drama queen who considered Isaac’s grief comparable to my own small self-inflicted woes.
“Sorry, Hunter. We’ll have set all the tongues wagging now.” I glanced around: we were being cheerfully observed by a brace of spry old men taking the air.
“Let them wag,” said Hunter. “Will you be all right? I need to get back.”
“I’m fine. I’ll just walk round a bit and clear my head.”
We shook hands gravely before we parted. He seemed reluctant to go: I watched his departing back, still conscious of the imprint of his disconcertingly solid shoulder, the harsh fabric of his uniform a strange substitute for the soft tweed of the jacket that I had imagined resting my unhappy head on.
But that had been a fantasy born of misery and need. All I’d done now was mortify poor Hunter. Dear God, I had just cried all over a policeman... I wondered what the two old men surmised from it: a confession made, a weeping sinner, advice given and accepted. All part of a busy officer’s day.
Chapter Seventeen